He rode on. M. Colbert got into his carriage, and this noble trio began a sufficiently slow pilgrimage towards the wood of Vincennes. Madame de Chevreuse set down Madame Vanel at her husbands house; and left alone with M. Colbert, she chatted upon affairs while continuing her ride. She had an inexhaustible fund of conversation, had that dear duchess, and as she always talked for the ill of others, always with a view to her own good, her conversation amused her interlocutor, and did not fail to make a favorable impression.
She taught Colbert, who, poor man, was ignorant of it, how great a minister he was, and how Fouquet would soon become nothing. She promised to rally around him, when he should become superintendent, all the old nobility of the kingdom, and questioned him as to the degre
